Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Decade

Husband, there is a lot I can say. But nothing means as much as the Three Little Words (one of my favorite movies of all time).

I love you.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Legendary Mace = Potential Drama Llama

Basics: A legendary healing mace, Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings, made of 30 Fragment of Val'anyr.

I am talking about this healing legendary item on my lock blog because if you haven’t developed an opinion on it … you will. If not now, then when that first fragment drops for your raid.

Nip the loot drama in the butt. Figure out how to distribute the fragments before stepping into Ulduar. Has your guild decided how they are going to be distributed? Mine did before 3.1 hit.

How are you going to deal with the fragments?
How do fragments work with your loot system?
Is there a cost/dkp change?
Is it a straight /roll?
Are you giving priority, first right of refusal to someone?
Who is that someone?
Do they accept?
Do the other healers KNOW?
Does everyone who cares understand why?

These were all the things that entered my mind when I had first heard about the mace prior to 3.1. I was much relieved to hear my guild officers had discussed it and was addressed within our loot system.

My first concern was the who. I had who I would pick. I found out that the chosen person was the same pally healer I had in mind. Then I stopped listening.

In my half listening state, I was told how they were going to charge DKP for the fragments. The full value of the legendary mace would be calculated and divided by the 30 fragments. So each looted fragment would cost 1/30th the cost of the mace.

The chosen pally will get first rights to the fragment. If he is not in raid, it will be a /roll or some such thing. (I stopped paying attention.)

Because of the large amount of dkp, we are talking about the pally had the right to refuse the honor. What I love about my guild … they asked.

Friday, May 22, 2009

TNB – French Breakfast

He is going to be on Twisted Nether Blogcast. If you don’t know who he is it maybe you don’t listen to a lot of podcasts. He does an addon segment for The Instance. He is also a co-host of How I WoW podcast. Also a whole bunch of other WoW related things.

What is more he is French.

I put in a request to Fim of TNB. I want Patrick to read the warlock section of the Patch notes of 3.1.2 in FRENCH.

Fim asked “Why?”

Fim don’t understand it. It is a girl gamer meets wow meets French guy meets romance novel thing. Just have him read the patch notes… please.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Two Raiding

So …. Ummm… I am raiding.

I know. Not a shocker. See… I did 25-Naxx twice. In one day.

Toward the end of Burning Crusade I saw a complete lack of interest of running raids. I saw even less for progression raiding. I vowed to never be in a position of wanting to raid but cannot raid for lack of raiders.

My druid is now level 80 as of the May 13th. Since then Iuncusia has a pure kitteh spec. I have run heroics, some multiple times. I have cleared three wings of Naxx and the fourth until Thaddius.

I entered in quest blues, some instance gear, and bind on account shoulders. Left with three epics including my T7.5 shoulders in one run. Starting out with about 1700 dps and then with practice hitting 2400 dps. (BTW… I actually need to know which mobs whirlwind now.)

She is in a different guild than Hydra.

I am a raider.

Getting Hydra to level 80 a month and a half after Wrath came out opened a lot of great PuG situations for me. There are not that may raiding guilds on my small-medium server. So we tried the new raids together. In that time I got to know other out of guild raiders. Then my own guild started to raid. So the PuGs stopped for me.

With Wrath it has been a riot. I am enjoying raiding on Hydra and with my guild immensely. I am doing everything I can think of to make sure I am better then expected. Or at least not be the one who was standing in the blue/purple/red/green flames/zone/swirl of death.

Having a 25 man casual group, though sometimes frustrating, is nice and relaxing for me (but then I am not an officer. *grin*). Having a Hardcore group for 10-man progression has been really nice (again because I am not an officer *grin*).

I am still being called to raid with those that I PuGed with early on.

I moved my drood too one of the three guilds I was running with. I leveled to 80 there. I watch their progression and drama. It reminds me how good Hydra has it… I actually like everyone I raid with.

Iuncusia’s goal is to pave the way for future raiding. She is my toon to PuG with a select few groups. I am sure there will be a time in Wrath that raiding will slow down. I know some are already finding Naxx boring.

I already found out that one of the members is an Alt from the third guild I sometimes run with. He whispered me when he realized that Iuncusia was Hydra’s Alt. We hit it off great, can you tell why?

[W] Hey I didn’t know you were in this guild too. / Evil

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Patch 3.1.2 In-Game Equipment Manager

Blizzard broke two battlegroups last night. No further Ulduar raid Monday night. I was happy it went down prior to raid formation. That way we didn't take the time to form up the raid. I really hope that failure in the realms is not a reflection of this patch.

Full patch notes for are here for Patch 3.1.2.
General
* Equipment Manager: When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).
* New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small [Champion's Seal] and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply). //More mounts for everyone!

PvP
* Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator's gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
* All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and [Stone Keeper's Shards] rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate. //Boooooooo.
* The bonus honor for winning the battle in Wintergrasp and controlling/destroying towers has been reduced. //They make something successful that people actually want to play. Their reaction is to nerf it. *shakes head*

Classes
Druids

* Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds. //Very nice. Particularly now that Innervate is now a button for me to push.

Mages

* Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied. //I always figured the mirror images were only as smart as the original. They are pretty dumb. Sounds like they had to buff the spell. *grin* I jest… a little.

Warlocks

* Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame.
* Fire and Brimstone: No longer increases the damage of your Immolate spell, but now increases the bonus damage your Incinerate deals to targets afflicted by your Immolate by 6/12/18/24/30%.
* Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
* Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker's health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown. //Interesting change… will have to play with this one.
* Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Items

* Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks. //Thank goodness. Drinking for others takes forever to get full mana. Life Tap FTW!!
* Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied. //I cannot think of a twink scope that this would effect. But I am sure someone will tell me.
* Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions
Fishing

* Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest. //I knew there was something fishy. *golf clap*
* [Phantom Ghostfish]: Can now be caught from [Nettlefish] schools in Sholazar Basin. //Mount pool fishing and daily combined.

Bug fixes
Rogues

* Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets. //ROLF. It is the exploit line. If they left that bit out it would not be as funny. But don’t you NOW want to know how it was being exploited?

Warlocks

* Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock's spellbook.

Dungeons and raids

* Players can no longer become saved to an instance when they aren't in the instance during a boss kill.

Ulduar

* Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
* 10-player bosses that drop [Runed Orbs] will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
* The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

Warlock Chat

When I first joined my guild over a year ago one of my first tasks was to join the guild warlock channel. Our guild uses a healer, tank, mage, and lock channel. For a while there was a guild NOOB channel but that didn’t stick around.

Lock channel is a subset of like minded players in the guild. In BC we had five raiding locks and in Wrath we have four raiding locks. Good locks attract good locks. We have kept it focused… the froth that occurred when a mage joined the chat was palatable.

I am told that the lock channel is the most fun. But I maybe a bit biased.

“You need an entire channel to decide on whom to soul stone?”
We don’t just do that. So I made a list of the things we have recently talked about.
  • We discuss which healer is going to die first. Typically a priest. They get nominated for the soul stone, unless they are under-geared or not healing one of us. We then choose another.
  • We use to decide who was Curse of Shadow and Curse of Elements. When the two curses were combined it wasn’t as important. Now we ensure that someone is using CoE, unless a DK is using their buff.
  • We /roll for replenishment and highest gets to pick what spec they want to run.
  • One of our primary uses is to make fun of Mages. It fills in raid times when tanking, healing, or melee instructions are being given out.
  • It is where we claim “Not It!” for Detect Invisibility. While still casting it.
  • Gear discussions. Like all the leather, mail, and plate items that drop and are JUNK. Not kidding… our first full clear of Naxx -25 resulted in ONE piece of lock loot. We saw every T7.5 drop of DK, Mage, Rogue, Druid. Not one lock piece.
  • How talents work together.
  • How cast rotations is non-existent for Affliction locks.
  • We train new locks out of bad habits. Like saying please and thank you. Unless it is used for nefarious purposes later.
  • Typical place to see Hydra cuss.
  • A place to vent annoyances.
  • Ask honest “How do I” questions and get class specific information.
  • Clarify raiding instructions.
  • Reminders of putting pets on passive.
  • Ask if anyone has Doomguard reagents.
  • Ask for summons back so you can get items to morph the raid leader into things to annoy him.
  • Assigning people to be members of Captain Planet and the Planeteers. /pout I never get to be the black guy. LeVar Burton FTW!!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Ode to a Tank

Hurry back to your computer.
Equip your shield.
Tank shit so I can DPS.
I rip mobs right off these other tanks.
It is so bad I am playing my alts.
Each raid I see the tank list.
*cringe*
When you are not on it I have to modify my play.
Don’t make me figure a way to bitch slap through the computer screen.

Oh! You’re back. Ok. Well.

Missed you!!

No, you cannot go Fury or Arms.
*shoves shield at him*
Tank shit.
Please.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Evil Check: Pre-Raid Pvp

It is raid time.

We are gathered for a heroic Obsidian Sanctum under Wyrmrest Temple. Standing between us and the portal to our planned dragon killing is a Blood Elf Paladin.

Standing there… Flagged.

A majority of the raiders run past him into the portal.

Decision time!

I run past. I feel my fingers hover over my spells wanting to. I start to strain under the pressure of NOT killing him.

It is raid time.

I have not tasted yummy Belf Pally in a while. There is also really big bouncer guys with axes to consider. The axe guys may protest my pally killing efforts. As I am thinking about being *shiver* good...

The last few of the raid come toward the portal. I see them hesitate. I hear…

Kill him.

Who am I to argue with the raid leader. *grin*

Shammie, The Mage, and I smoosh the pally into the floor, I think I had time to blink. I am not quite sure.

I watch as they “tea bag” the pally. He must have liked it because it took him a while to release his spirit.

If I killed him on my own that may have been bad. But group bonding? That works.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Drain Soul Note

Drain Soul will get soul shards off training dummies.

OK.

[Insert dead wood joke here]
Whatever.

To those that say wood has a life on its own apparently Warcraft agrees with you.

On a more practical note, shard farming can now be combined with testing time.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

His... Her... It...

The title from Children’s Week gave males the title Patron and females the title Matron. One of the priests in guild noted to that then he turns into angel form his title swaps form Patron then to Matron. Every time it happens we get a good laugh.

Underbelly Elixir also does this switching of gender! I turned into a Tuskarr after finding one in the sewers of Dalaran.I then got the message of the title change when I gained the buff and then 10 minutes later when it wore off.A warlock with this title?

I mean is not like I plan on using the title… to lure children to me so I can encourage them to look at the pretty red hot furnace in Utgarde Keep and push them in so I can watch them burn… or anything.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Soaring

I can fly again.First thing I did was jump off Dalaran.

Then changing to flight form.
Then to Elf.
Then to flight.
Then to Elf.
Then back to flight

before hitting the ground made for an interesting first flight. I forgot how to fly.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Busy Killin’ and Chillin’

I have 16 pages of written blog lists and post. This latest patch has soaked all my blogging time. I will get back to it. *looks at notes* Well those things that are still readable. Here are some random things going on.

The Argent Tournament.

The faction pets are not soulbound. I found this the other night. Any enterprising Horde or Alliance can sell them the other faction for outrageous prices (think thousands of gold). Like all things sooner the better to reap the benefits.

My druid is just starting the tourney dailies. It would be great to find a Horde on server willing to do the dailies and we can trade the faction pets. (*wave* @Oath.)

I wants it all!!!

With tips from guildies I also figured out a good step by step to beating Champions. Keep 3 shields up. Charge when they go in range. Make a wide circle around them to shield brake. Melee. Repeat each time they try to get in distance.

Duel Spec

I paid my one thousand gold and then promptly forgot I even did it until this weekend.

I did put together a passable PvP spec for the achievement, School of Hard Knocks. Which I totally cheated on btw… Had a pocket pally healer with a PvP title run around with me. He “bopped” people to stop Alliance from turning flags instead of me. He used Crusader Aura in Eye of the Storm to grab flag first then hand it off to me. It was easy peesy. And you laugh at those of us that twink. It is good to have PvP friends for things like this.

Lock Replenishment

After my foray into PvP I have a Replenishment warlock spec. I am using a 3/15/55 spec. This is only the first one I have tried. Use beware. It has Suppression for hit and Improved Soul Leech for the raid replenishment.

I do have to say I am quite pleased. I have lost a little DPS but Naltog has gain a bit. As my other guild lock pointed out …I am trying to keep it one lock and one mage does replenishment. We are thinking that it may not work out that way since the lock drop in damage is not even close to what the mage replenishment spec is like.

Fishing Dailies

I got a CRAB! I didn’t even know they added the crab pet to the fishing daily. It was quite a shock that it showed up in my bag. I like the dailies. Silly rogues trying to kill me in Wintergrasp while fishing. LOVE IT! BRING IT ON!!

Raiding

Ulduar-25 we are just farming Loot Leviathan. Our 25 raiders are not geared for Ulduar success. Well it is not just gear. It is also some need to raid with us more to understand how we work together. I love being launched on top and kill all the turrets. So much fun!Ulduar-10 we have the council down. And it was a fun fight! There was special stuff for everyone to do. Tanks to move boss. Healers to cleanse and heal. Range dps to stand in runes. Melee to help interrupt casts. Fun raiding is fun.Naxx, OS, and borked EoE-25 is still also happening. There are very few upgrades there for me. The goal is to get everyone enough gear to run Ulduar. People were instructed to go to wow-heros.com and if they don’t have a 2200 gear rating to think about what they need and what to do about it. I hope that in another two weeks or so we will be back into Ulduar 25. (BTW. I, Hydra was the best geared in guild as of start of 3.1. *grin* I was told that. I didn’t look it up.)

All this and blogging was not going to happen. /flop

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Where Hydra Got Chatty

Twisted Nether Blogcast – Episode 42 is up to be downloaded. You can listen to myself with Runycat, Maerdred, Lassirra, and Anna talk about a lot of 3.1 stuff and how it is going for us. Our hosts Fimlys and Nibuca kept us moving through all the topics we had to cover.

Participating as part of this round table made for a fun night. There was some technical difficulty getting the live chat room set up. This made the night a bit longer but I never regretted the late hour (particularly since I knew those in the east coast we charging through.)

I felt very chatty and covered everything on my list. EXCEPT a quick note on all the 3.1 twink changes which there were so very many. *sigh* Of course I didn’t bring it up because I thought “I don’t have to write that down because how can I forget how drastic those changes were for twinks.” Well I did. I apologize for that oversight.

Have a listen!